Enhancing Improvisation Ability in Communication: Scaffolding Narrative Skills in Conversations

Abstract

This research explores pedagogy to build Chinese learners’ communicative competence that supports narrative improvisation during an ongoing conversation. The case study employs language learners’ improvised narratives on “breaking rules in class” in oral interviews to examine students’ different narrative structures in communication. Meticulously designing contextualized performances in class is key to facilitate the developed memory of language learners’ past experiences. These personal memories will accumulate and become a ready source for students to draw from for engaging narrative in everyday conversations. The ability to improvise a conversation effectively goes deeper than the one-time action and reflects a longer scaffolding process. By associating students’ prior experiences as subject matter for improvising responses in a conversation, language learning is more effective than simply reciting a script from memory.